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Abraham Lincoln 



An Address 



— BY — 

2 he Rev. William E. Barton, D.D., LL.D. 

Minister of the First Church of Oak Park 
— Delivered in — 

The First Congregational Church of Oak Park, Illinois 
on Sunday, February 29, 1920 



DDD 



OAK PARK, ILLINOIS 



Advance Publishing Company 



19 2 

Pric9 25 cents 



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E457 



Abraham Lincoln 

By the Rev. William E. Barton, D. D., LL. D. 



America is large and is growing larger. Once she was a thin 
strip of partially cleared land, bounded on the East by the vast 
ocean and on the West by the unexplored wilderness. Gradually 
she stretched westward till the Pacific Ocean was her boundary 
toward the going down of the sun. Now she extends westward to 
Hawaii and the Philippines, and no man dare say in terms of her 
international influence just where she is bounded Eastward. Those 
fields in Flanders and in France where her sons lie buried, those 
lands of the Near East that have been rescued from starvation and 
anarchy by her generosity, are bound to us by ties stronger than 
political bands and have given to the United States new areas, if 
not of territory or political control, at least of moral power and of 
ethical responsibility. But as America has grown, the fame of her 
great men has grown with it. The men who incarnated America's 
ideal when America was thirteen small colonies, still worthily 
incarnate that ideal when America is forty-eight great states and 
half a world beside. Abraham Lincoln, who was doubtfully ad- 
mitted to a place among America's great men while he was living, 
and the North and the South were striving one against the other, 
is now the hero not only of North and South, but of an interna- 
tionalized America. Our nation has expanded, our ideals have 
grown, our conception of what great men might be has vastly en- 
larged, but Washington and Lincoln are still adequate. 

Out of the fathomless ocean of oblivion which has buried the 
names and memory of very nearly the entire human race, rises 
here and there a great and remembered name, that lifts its crest 
above the silent sea, like a mountain in an ocean archipelago, 
having on its headland a beacon, that casts its light afar. 

We are nearing the time for a correct estimate of the life and 
character of Abraham Lincoln. Our knowledge of him is not yet 
quite complete. There still remain people who knew him and 
whose personal reminiscences as yet are unpublished. But that 
number is rapidly diminishing; nor is it at all likely that we have 
anything to learn about Lincoln which will greatly modify our view 
of him. More has been written about him than about any other 
man of modern times. Not even Napoleon has a more notable 
bibliography. The sources of information have been more dili- 
gently explored than in the case of any other man in American 
history. One thing grows more certain as the years go by, and 
that is that the influence of Abraham Lincoln has not yet reached 



its zenith. Great as is the love which America holds for him, it is 
a growing affection, and is certain to grow yet more, in the South, 
as in the North. 

Nor is the fame of Lincoln limited to America; the great 
world war has been significant in this as in many other things, 
that it has brought a world-recognition %uch as he never had before 
to America's noblest exponent of America's spirit. The nations 
that joined with us in fighting to make the world safe for democracy 
needed a definition of democracy, and they found it in his word at 
Gettysburg, they needed an exponent, of democracy, and they 
found it in his personality. Abraham Lincoln is more than Amer- 
ica's first American. He is the world's foremost world-citizen. 

An Outline of His Life 
Abraham Lincoln, sixteenth President of the United States, 
was born in 1809 and died in 1865, aged 56 years. His life divides 
itself into five periods: 

1. His Childhood, 1809-1816. The first period includes the 
first seven years of his life, from his birth in a one-roomed log 
cabin near Hodgenville, Ky., on Feb. 12, 1809, till the removal of 
his father and mother to the backwoods of Indiana in 1816. He 
attended the local school, doubtless a "blab school," where children 
were required to study their lessons aloud, and which gave him a 
habit he retained throughout life of uttering aloud his words as he 
wrote them. He doubtless attended the meetings of the Baptist 
Church which were held about three miles distant, Hodgenville 
having been from its beginning a Baptist settlement, and the 
monthly meetings being important social as well as religious 
gatherings. He had one sister, Sarah, sometimes incorrectly called 
Nancy, who was more than a year older than himself. The parents 
of these two children, Thomas and Nancy Hanks Lincoln, had been 
married near Beechland, Washington County, Ky., June 12, 1806. 

2. His Boyhood, 1816-1829. The second period includes the 
years of his life from the time of his parents' removal to Spencer 
County, Ind., in 1816, till the removal of the family from Indiana 
to Illinois in the spring of 1830, when Abraham was 21 years of age. 
In the Indiana home his mother died, Oct. 5, 1818; and there, after 
a little more than a year, Thomas Lincoln brought his second wife, 
Sarah Bush Lincoln, to whom he was married at his old home, 
Elizabethtown, Ky., in December, 1819. She was a devout woman, 
and like his own mother, exercised a gracious influence over 
Abraham, who remembered her with gratitude all his days. In 
Indiana he attended school in desultory fashion for a few months, 
and became noted as the reader of every book which he could bor- 
row, his chief literary material being- the Bil)le. A\'eems' Lite of 
Washington, Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, Aesop's Fables, a his- 
tory of the United States and the Revised Statutes of Indiana. At 
the age of 17 he. had attained his full height, which was above six 
feet and three inches, and he was noted as a wrestler, a writer of 
rude satirical verses, and certain compositions among which we 

Gift 
Author 
'.HR i5 1926 



remembered one on temperance and another against cruelty to 
animals. At the age of 19 he made a journey to New Orleans upon 
a flatboat, and he continued always to be interested in river 
navigation. Except for this journey, the woods of southern Indiana, 
with a limited outlook upon Kentucky across the Ohio River, 
bounded his horizon during the whole of his later boyhood. 

3. Young Manhood, 1830-1837. After his removal with his 
father and stepmother to the vicinity of Decatur, 111., in March, 
1830, he made a second flatboat voyage to New Orleans, after which 
he established himself in the village of New Salem, on the Sanga- 
mon River, his residence there covering practically the entire his- 
tory of that microscopic and short-lived town. He first saw New 
Salem when his flatboat stuck there on the dam of Rutledge's mill, 
April 19, 1831, and he left it on a borrowed horse, with all his 
worldly goods in a pair of saddle bags, March 15, 1837, to take up 
his residence in Springfield. New Salem was his Alma Mater, 
There he studied Kirkham's Grammar, and learned the science of 
surveying. He served as postmaster, was captain of a volunteer 
compan}' in the Black Hawk war, was elected in 1834, and re- 
elected in 1836, 1838 and 1840, a member of the Legislature, serving 
until 1842, and doing much to secure the removal of the vState 
Capitol from Vandalia to Springfield. He endeavored to conduct a 
general store, but was unsuccessful in business, and left New Salem 
with' debts which kept him heavily ciunbered until his election to 
Congress in 1848. In New Salem he read law, and engaged in 
political discussion-;, and became more than locally famous as a 
politician. The law was not then a jealous mistress, and Lincoln 
was a nolitician first and hicidentally a lawyer. 

4. His Career as a Lawyer and Politician, 1837-1861. Lincoln's 
life in Springfield began March 15, 1837, and there he lived until 
his removal to take the oath of office as President of the United 
States, his journey beginning on Feb. 11, 1861, the day preceding 
his fifty-second birthday. His life in Springfield, begun in deep 
poverty, won him increasing recognition as a lawyer of ability and 
a politician of widening influence. He was elected to Congress in 
1846, over his Democratic opponent, the redoubtable Rev. Peter 
Cartwright, a distinguished Methodist preacher, and was the only 
Whig member elected from Illinois in 1846. In 1837 he, with one 
associate, Dan Stone, had introduced into the Legislature of Illinois 
a protest against the extension of slavery, and while in Congress he 
prepared a bill for gradual emancipation, with compensation to the 
slave owner. Never technically an Abolitionist, he became more 
deeply involved in the discussion of the slavery issue as a result of 
the Kansas-Nebraska bill and the repeal of the Missouri Com- 
promise in 1854, and in 1856 he joined the Republican party, or- 
ganized at Bloomington, with its fundamental tenet the opposition 
to further extension of slavery. On that occasion, at Bloomington, 
he made his famous "Lost Speech." On June 16, 1858, he made 
what was the most rash and most fortunate address of his life in his 



declaration that the Union could not permanently remain half slave 
and half tree, and that "a house divided against itself cannot stand." 
After the Dred Scott decision, he engaged in joint debate with 
Stephen A. Douglas, which was followed by his defeat by Douglas 
for the United States Senate, and his subsequent election as 
President of the United States. 

While in New Salem he had loved Ann Rutledge, and after- 
ward had proposed to Mary Owens, who rejected him. On Nov. 
4, 1842, he married in Springfield Mary Todd, a brilliant young 
woman from Lexington, Ky., who bore him four sons, only one of 
whom is now living, and who, being now an aged man and childless, 
will leave the Lincoln line extinct. 

5. His Presidency, 18G1-1865. Abraham Lincoln was nomi- 
nated for the Presidency at the Republican National Convention, 
held at a great wigwam, erected at the corner of Lake and Market 
Streets, Chicago, May 18, 1860, and was elected in November of 
that year. He was inaugurated March 4, 1861. Four years after 
his first election, he was re-elected, his second inaugural address 
being the noblest of all his utterances. His first election was fol- 
lowed by the secession of eleven Sovithern states, and by four 
years of civil war. He bore the unprecedented burdens of his of- 
fice with a heroism the greater because his heart was breaking 
under the strain of it ; he performed the stern duties of his adminis- 
tration with a fortitude the more commendable because it was done 
"With malice toward none, with charity for all." On Sept. 22, 1862, 
he issued the Emancipation Proclamatijn, that struck the shackles 
from four millions of human beings. He lived to see the successful 
termination of the war, and on April 9, 1865, the surrender of the 
armies of Gen. Robert E. Lee, but on the following Friday night, 
April 14, he was shot by an assassin, and died the next morning. 
Since then, in the language of his Secretary of War, he has belonged 
to the ages. 

His Continuous Education 

Frequent comment is made upon Lincoln's early struggles to 
obtain an education. Let us remind ourselves of the manner in 
which he continued to educate himself. Let us recall one incident 
that will illustrate at once his progress in pursuit of knowledge and 
his magnanimity of spirit. 

In 1859 he was engaged in what was probably his most im- 
portant law-suit, as it then appeared, for it took him to another 
state than that in which he had already won prestige, and gave him 
association with eminent counsel both on his own and the opposing 
side, and an opportunity, as he hoped, to distinguish himself. It 
was the McCormick Reaper case, which was tried in Cincinnati, and 
he was associated as counsel with Edward M. Stanton. Stanton 
doubted Lincoln's ability to handle a case of such importance, and 
saw to it that Lincoln was not permitted to plead. Lincoln was 
bitterly disappointed, and declared that he had never been treated 
so brutally as by Stanton. But Lincoln sat back and observed how 



lawyers who had been trained as he had not, prepared and presented 
their arguments. Ralph Emerson, who was with him there, has told 
the story : 

"When the heari'ng was through, Mr. Lincohi called me to him as we 
left the courtroom, and wanted to walk and talk. For block after block 
he walked forward, silent and deeply dejected. At last, turning to me, he 
exclaimed, 'Emerson, I'm going home.' A pause. 'I am going home to 
study law.' 

"'Why,' I exclaimed, 'Mr. Lincoln, you stand at the head of the bar in 
Illinois now. What are you talking about?" 

" 'Yes, yes,' he said, 'I do occupy a good position there, and I think 
I can get along with the way things are goi'ng there now. But these college 
trained men who have devoted their whole lives to study are coming west, 
don't you see? They study on a single case perhaps for months, as we 
never do. We are apt to catch up the thing as it goes before a jury and 
trust to the inspiration of the moment. They have got as far as Ohio now. 
They will soon be in Illinois.' 

"Another lo'ng pause. Then stopping and turning toward me, his 
countenance suddenly assumed that strong look of determination which 
we who knew him best som-etimes saw on his face, and he exclaimed: 

"'I'm, going home to study law! I'm as good as any of them, and 
when they get out to Illinois, I will be ready for them!' 

"He finished and at once became very cheerful, as though he now saw 
a clear path before him." 

This is an important incident, and it illustrates some traits of 
Lincoln's character which we cannot afford to pass over lightly. 

Precisely what studies engaged the attention of Lincoln after 
this encounter with Stanton in 1859, we do not know ; but we are 
able to understand something of the degree of self-discipline which 
his resolution involved, and what estimate on his own part of the 
seriousness of the undertaking, when we recall a course of study 
which he had recently undertaken and mastered. After his return 
to Springfield, following his single session in Congress, he "prac- 
ticed, law more assiduously than ever before," and "was losing in- 
terest in politics, when the repeal of the Missouri Coinpromise 
aroused me again," as he recorded in his notes to Jesse Fell. 

"It was at this time," say his biographers, Nicolay and Hay, "that he 
gave 'notable proof of his unusual powers of mental discipline. His wider 
knowledge of men and things, acquired by contact with the great world, 
had shown him a certain lack in himself of close and sustained reasoning. 
To remedy this defect, he applied himself, after his return from Congress, 
to such works on logic and mathematics as he fancied would be serviceable. 
Devoting himself with dogged energy to the task in hand, he soo'n learned 
by heart six books of the propositions of Euclid, and he retained through 
life a thorough knowledge of the principles they contain." (Nicolay and 
Hay, i:298-299.) 

Now this is the more notable because Lincoln already was a 
man of mature years and had won distinguished success. He had 
an excellent opportunity to sulk and complain of having been 
treated badly, and of determining to go back to Illinois and enjoy 
the prestige which he had already won. But on his return from 
Congress he studied Euclid, and learned the kind of proof which 



is known as demonstration; and after his humiliation at Cincinnati, 
he came back determined to begin to study law, — he who was al- 
ready the leader of the Illinois bar. 

Not only did he display his power of rigid self-discipline, which 
many men lack in proportion as they appear to have gained success, 
but he showed his magnanimity. Smarting, as he certainly smart- 
ed under the treatment of Stanton, when he needed a Secretary 
of War, he called the very man who had most deeply hurt him, 
for Lincoln believed that that man, however personally uncom- 
fortable to himself, was capable of doing a great and necessary piece 
of work for the nation. Not always have Presidents been so mag- 
nanimous in the matter of their cabinet. 

His Love of Humor 

Let us remember the quality and the value of Lincoln's love 
of humor. 

Lincoln's humor was the positive pole of his melancholy. 
Those who knew him best, testify that he was seldom perfectly 
happy. His was the smile that floated over a current of tears, like 
the play of sunlight on deep water. Have you never noticed how, 
after a hearty laugh, a company relapses into a moment of un- 
wonted sobriety? There is something profoundly solemn in mirth. 

Lincoln laughed so heartily because he was so near to weep- 
ing. His joy was the exuberance of a deep, rich, sympathetic 
nature. It gave him surcease from the load that weighed him down, 
the load of his country's sorrow, the load of his responsibility for 
men facing death, the load that night and day never lifted, save for 
a moment when he forgot care in the enjoyment of a laugh. And 
this was why men so little understood him, and counted his mirth 
for reckless and unthinking bufifoonery. 

Moreover, Lincoln's humor was the crystallization of sound 
good sense. Each of his stories had as its kernel a homely truth, 
set forth as succinctly as in one of the quaint proverbs of Benjamin 
Franklin. Separate the authentic stories from the mass of plainly 
invented ones, and from the improbable and unworthy ones, and 
you will fimd in every case the story is the wire on which he con- 
veys the current of q-ood sense, and the joke is the electric flash of 
homely wisdom. 

Still further, Lincoln's humor was humor, not wit. I do not 
care to split hairs as to the difference between them, but in com- 
mon acceptance there is in wit some bit of sarcasm, some sting of 
vindictiveness. In Lincoln's humor w^as only kindness, for kind- 
ness only was in his heart. 

His Kindness 

It was his kindness that made him great. He was "clothed 
with almost absolute power, and never abused it save on the side 
of mercy." His was the nature that could love his enemies. Men 
sometimes say that the standard of Christ is impossible, "Love 



your enemies, and pray for those that despitefully use you." 
Neither Lincoln nor Grant hated the men they fought, or ever had 
pleasure in giving pain. The most foolish criticism ever made on 
prayer is that of shallow men who say, "Lincoln prayed, and so did! 
Lee, and one as sincerely as the other, and to the same God : be- 
hold then how their prayers neutralized each other." That is the 
word of the idle critic, and the foolish man. It is because Lincoln 
and Lee prayed to the same God, it is because men on both sides 
fought, each for what he believed right, and with love, not hatred 
in his heart, that we are one nation again. The prayers of the 
brave are answered in our present national unity and kindliness of 
heart. 

And that is why Abraham Lincoln is a national, not a sectional 
hero. He wept, he laughed, sometimes in alternation and some- 
times simultaneously; but his laugh had nothing in it of scorn, 
and his tears were tears of sympathy for North and South alike ; and 
the whole country, yea, and the whole world, honors him ; for his 
smile had in it that touch of nature that makes the whole world kin. 

His Life a Demonstration of the Value of Democracy 

We can never despair of democracy so long as the story of 
Abraham Lincoln reads true to American life. A child of the 
humblest parentage, born in a log cabin, nurtured in the wilderness, 
gaining his scanty education against every natural disadvantage, 
he rose by right to his sheer manhood and nobility of character 
to be President of the United States, and in that position abundant- 
ly justified the confidence of his fellow citizens. That story in 
Itself is typical of the very best there is in American life. In the 
light of the career of such a man, no child of America need ever 
despair of the best ; nor can our hopes of democracy utterly fail 
when out of the obscure and belated elements in our national life 
can come such a character as Lincoln. 

The Evolution of His Moral Convictions 
You will remember that Lincoln having been three times a 
member of the Illinois Legislature was elected to Congress in 1846, 
and after serving there and seeing no immediate political futurq 
settled down to the task of making- himself a better and more in- 
fluential lawyer. There came a time when he thought his political 
career was at an end. In his own mind he rather definitely with- 
drew from public life. He formed partnerships in several counties 
with younger lawyers and secured larger and more remunerative 
cases. His fees grew larger and he had money in the bank. When 
Lincoln came back again into public life he came under the com- 
pulsion of a stronger moral conviction than had been manifested 
in his earlier career. Beginning with his Peoria address in Octo- 
ber, 1854, it grew ever clearer down to the time of his second inau- 
gural. In Peoria he made his fundamental declaration concern- 
ing slavery that "No man is good enough to govern another man 
without that other man's consent." In 1858, against the advice of 
his political friends, he uttered the bold prophecy of the "house 



divided against itself." He entered upon his duties as President 
almost overwhelmed by the task which rested upon him of keeping 
the Union whole. But it gradually became clear to him that in 
the purpose of God it was his duty not merely to keep it whole, 
but to make it free. That was a most impressive meeting with 
the Cabinet when he brought before them the Emancipation Pro- 
clamation, saying that while he wished their advice concerning any 
of its minor or incidental features, he did not ask advice concern- 
ing the main issue. For this he determined in his own heart and 
made his promise to God. 

One cannot read with any degree of care his messages and 
letters in the days that followed without seeing how that reliance 
upon the Divine leadership grew in Mr. Lincoln's mind ; nor how 
nobly it lifted him to the level of his high responsibility. 

You will remember what happened after his second nomi- 
nation for the Presidency in May of 1864, and before the election 
in November of the same year. There was the slaughter and un- 
certainty of the Wilderness campaign ; there was the failure to 
capture Richmond; there was the awful tragedy of Petersburg; 
there was Early's raid and the revelation of the practically de- 
fenseless condition of Washington ; there was the tremendous 
growth of opposition to the draft and the practical certainty as it 
seemed in mid-summer that Lincoln would not be re-elected. You 
Avill remember how on Aug. 23, 1864. Lincoln wrote down his 
solemn resolution declaring to God and his own soul what he in- 
tended to do after his defeat. 

"This morning, as for some days past, it seems exceedingly probable 
that this administration will not be re-elected. Then it will be my duty to 
so co-operate with the president-elect as to save the Unio'n between the 
election and the inauguration, as he will have secured his election on such 
ground that he cannot possibly save it afterward." 

That, I believe, is one of the noblest of all the declarations 
of Abraham Lincoln, and one that shows him in the largeness of 
his nature, the greatness and heroism of his consecrated purpose. 

But Lincoln was re-elected and he stood again to take the 
oath as President of the United States. It was in his second inau- 
gural that he faced most fully the moral issues of his time. He 
measured his own providential call and righteous purpose at high 
water mark. He even ventured into theology and raised the ques- 
tion, difficult then as now, how two. opposing armies could rely 
upon the same Bible and pray to the same God, and whether God 
could answer the prayers of either, or both. To us at the North 
he says, it would seem very strange that "any man should dare 
to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the 
sweat of other men's faces." But here he quotes the word of 
Christ and says, "Let us judge not that we be not judged." The 
prayers of neither section, he says, could be fully answered, for 
slavery has been a national sin. The Almighty, he declares, has 
His own purpose. Offenses must needs come, and woe unto him 



by -whom the offense cometh. "Fondly do we hope — fervently do 
we pray — that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. 
Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the 
bondman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be 
sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn from the lash shall be 
paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand 
years ago, so still it must be said, 'The judgments of the Lord 
are true and righteous altogether.' 

"With malice toward none ; with charity for all ; with firmness 
in the right, as God givesi us to see the right, let us strive on to 
finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to caie 
for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his 
orphan — to do all which may achieve a just and lasting peace 
among ourselves, and with all nations." 

That, I say, measures Abraham Lincoln at high water mark. 
That utterance shows the heart and purpose of the men who have 
come fully to realize the righteous purpose of God wrought out 
through a fearful national struggle. Such men, like Noah in the 
olden time, save the hope of humanity in its time of deluge. 

His Faith in the People 
Lincoln believed in the people. He believed that government 
by the people was the most stable and righteous of all govern- 
ment. Was he right? We have answered that question so far 
as the sword can answer it, but it is only half answered. Kipling 
has answered it with prophecies of a Reign of Terror, and in lines 
of frightful omen : 

Whether the People be led by the Lord, 

Or lured by the loudest throat; 
If it be quicker to die by the sword 

Or cheaper to die by vote — 
These are the things we have dealt with once, 

(And they will not rise from their grave) 
For Holy People, however it runs, 

E'ndeth in wholly slave. 

"Whatsoever for any cause, 

Seeketh to take or give 
Power above or beyond the laws, 

Suffer it not to live! 
Holy State or Holy King 

Or Holy People's Will- 
Have no truck with the senseless thing! 

Order the guns, and kill! 

Once there was The People — Terror gave it birth; 
Once there was The People and it made a Hell of Earth; 
Earth arose and crushed it. Listen, O ye slain! 
Once there was The People — it shall never be again!" 

But it makes a difference whether the people are led by the 
Lord, or lured by the loudest throat. And if the guns to kill are 
ordered, it is the People who will ultimately fire them. One of 
the People can shoot as far and as straight as any one represent- 



ing Holy State or Holy King. Sooner or later we must come back 
to the People. We cannot have a stable government upheld by 
bayonets. Lincoln knew that. And we who went across the sea 
to make men free from despotism must not forget it, or we shall 
be reminded of our inadvertence. 

Truly as when Lincoln stood at Gettysburg Ave have been 
fighting a war to determine whether government of the people 
and by the people can long endure. If despotism is to be fol- 
lowed by anarchy in any of its forms, the war is not yet over. 

The Religion of Lincoln 

An address of this kind should contain something about the 
religion of Abraham Lincoln. That is a subject to which it were 
easier to devote a volume than a paragraph. A great deal that 
has been written on this subject, part of by truthful and honest 
people, I do not accept as true, and I have no time to waste in 
telling what I do not believe. Nor have I time to give at length 
or in detail the reasons for what I do believe concerning him. 
I believe that he was a Christian, although never a member of a 
Christian church. I believe that his spiritual life was an evolu- 
tion and that we can trace with some degree of accuracy its 
processes and successive stages. 

The background of Lincoln's early religious life was that of 
the old-fashioned, pioneer, close-communion, Calvinistic Baptist. 
This made him a fatalist to the end of his life ; and in his later 
approaches to some of the tenets of Universalism, he was still 
the uncompromising Calvinist. reasoning to a different conclusion 
but from the same premises as those held by the Baptist preachers 
whom he had known. With this there mingled a strong ten- 
dency to rationalism, gained by him while reading as a young 
man the works of Volney and Paine, which tendency was accen- 
tuated by an inborn and almost morbid caution. To this was 
added in 1850 a new argument for the evidences of Christianity, 
such as never had come to him before and which now for the first 
time seemed to him to have a basis in formal logic. When all 
deductions have been made it is impossible to escape the convic- 
tion that his mind underwent a certain change toward religion 
early in 1850 after the death of his little son, Edward, and of his 
reading of a book, "The Christian's Defense," which no biographer 
of Lincoln ever has read or owned, but which Lincoln pronounced 
"unanswerable." A still further and to some extent contemporary 
development was in his reading of "The Vestiges of the Natural 
History of Creation," the only book on evolution which he ever 
read and which gave him a rational basis of his belief in the 
working of God through natural forces and for what he called 
the operation of "miracles under law." 

Beside all this there was in Lincoln and in his wife a marked 
strain of superstition such as is common to frontier life and which 
always had a strong hold, if not upon his intelligence, at least 
upon his sub-consciousness. 



It need not surprise us when we analyze his religion into 
its component parts to find it made up of more or less inconsis- 
tent and even contrary elements. If any of his ideas were incon- 
sistent with each other, they were all consistent with the mind 
and character of the man. 

Hei believed in God; he believed in duty; he believed in im- 
mortality; he believed in prayer. He had a solemn covenant 
registered in heaven to perform his duty faithfully, and when he 
issued the Emancipation Proclamation he told his cabinet in quiet 
word that hushed all opposition that he had promised his God 
to do that thing. 

Lincoln's religion underwent something of the same evolu- 
tion which accompanied the development of his literary style, and 
exhibited some similarities of contrast and contradiction. Lincoln 
was a great story-teller ; yet you may read his speeches from 
end to end and hardly find a story. His favorite poet was Robert 
Burns, and you may read his speeches from end to end and not 
find a single quotation from the Scottish poet. His early style 
was highly rhetorical, almost ridiculously so, full of pretentious, 
high-sounding phrases. He then developed the controversial style 
of the stump-speaker, sometimes with rude jokes and boisterous 
gestures and platform performances. His style became one of 
calm dignity and his English was a pure well of Anglo-Saxon 
undefiled. His moral and spiritual evolution went hand in hand 
with this development of his literary method. He made his relig- 
ious system out of such material as he found at hand, and he 
wrought it into shape by the slow processes of a mind that never 
worked rapidly but that worked accurately and surely. Into it 
also he wrought his stern demand for a reasonable faith, his 
conception of what constituted the essentials of divine justice, 
and the affirmations of a nature which was, inherently and pro- 
foundly religious. The mighty responsibilities of the war de- 
veloped his spiritual nature. The solemn duties which daily he 
had to face kept him humble before God and profoundly awake 
to the will of the people. The larger implications of the slavery 
issue grew in his mind into a conviction that he was an instrument 
of Providence. In 1854 he believed that a house divided against 
itself could not stand. By the end of 1862 he was able to express 
his view of emancipation in these immortal words, perhaps the 
noblest which Lincoln ever uttered : 

"In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the 



free — honorable alike in what we give and what we preserve. 
We shall nobly save or meanly lose the last and best hope of 
earth." 

He believed that his own personal responsibility to God was 
such that he could not permit America to lose the world's last 
and best hope. He freed the slave because in doing so he ful- 
filled a promise which he had made to his God. 

The Value of Great Men 

It is our solemn duty, as it is our inspiring privilege, to 
contemplate the characters of great and good men, that by their 
lives our own may be encouraged. It is due them that we should 
honor good men for their works' sake, as well as for our own 
instruction and the blessing and inspiration of our children. 

Washington and Lincoln, each in his day, stood as the fore- 
most representative of the ideal of America. But it was a greatly 
enlarged ideal. George Washington was an American, but he 
was also an Englishman. He bought his "hatts" and Martha's 
bonnets in London, and ordered the styles then current in that 
metropolis. Nancy Hanks did not buy her sun-bonnets in London, 
neither were her linsey-woolsey skirts woven after patterns 
obtained from there. When the American crossed the crest of 
the Alleghenies, a new type of American began. He was an 
American who was not able to import much of anything from 
England, and would not have cared to do it if he could. Andrew 
Jackson and Henry Clay were born on the eastward side of the 
dividing hills, but they had their training on the westward 
slope. With them and their companions began a new epoch in 
American history and the development of a new type of American. 
Of that new type Abraham Lincoln was the foremost exponent. 
He was born with the mountains between him and the sea, and 
the land he knew was America, stretching to both horizons. 

The prophet Jeremiah wrote a notable verse : 

"And their prince shall be of themselves, and their ruler shall 
proceed from the midst of them." (Jeremiah 30:21.) 

This is the prophetic promise concerning the rulers on earth ot 
the people of the Bible. They were not to be governed by kings 
imposed upon them by arbitrary authority, but by men raised up 
from among the people, representing the people, and ruling for 
the welfare of the people. This is not an isolated or unimportant 
promise. The oldest of Messianic predictions is filled with the 
same lofty idea : 



"Moses indeed said, A prophet shall the Lord God raise up 
unto you from among your brethren." (Acts 3:28; Deut. 18:15.) 
E\en the prophecies concerning the coming of the Christ are funda- 
mentally democratic. 

Jeremiah wrote at the time of the Exile, when Israel was 
ruled by Babylon. He looked forward to the time when foreign 
despots should not longer tyrannize over the people to whom he 
ministered. Government was to proceed from the people, and 
to be for the benefit of the people. 

Of all rulers in modern history, none more fully exemplified 
this principle than Abraham Lincoln. He, of all leaders of great 
nations, came from the people. He, of all who have defined in 
word and character the principles of popular rule, set forth the 
essential quality of a republic as one in which government is of 
the people, and for the people and by the people. 

America's Need of Americans 

There is a stirring line in one of the poems of Sam Walter 
1' OSS : 

"Give me men to match my mountains." 

It is the cry of America to the people of America; it is the 
demand that America shall be measured not by her territory but 
by the character of her people; not by her machinery but by her 
manhood. We have inherited great names from older nations. 
Shakespeare and Cromwell and John Bunyan were not born in 
the United States. We claim them as our own by kinship with 
their spirits; but America is not shut up to the necessity of 
receiving from other nations the inspiration of great names and 
having none of her own to bequeath. She has inherited from 
other lands great names that incarnate great ideals; and she has 
given great names and true ideals to other lands. She has 
conceived an ideal of high-minded patriotism, combined with mili- 
tary and political leadership and crowned with the glory of 
heroism, integrity and devotion to the public weal and with it has 
proclaimed the name of Washington. Then she has defined 
democracy in terms of authority as residing in the people and 
righteousness as expressed in the will of the people, and of kindli- 
ness and of humanity and conscience as expressed in a heroic 
life that sprang from among the people, and has called it by the 
immortal name of Abraham Lincoln. 

Democracy Tested by Its Leaders 

The first test of a democracy is that it shall promote the 
well-being of the whole body of the people, and nurture them in 



independence, in prosperity, in intelligence, and in righteousness. 
Its benefits must be widespread, and must accrue to the people 
as a whole rather than to special and privileged classes. Not 
only governmental authority but public benefit and private reward 
must be widely disseminated ; they must be of the people and by 
the people and for the people. 

But it is easy to imagine a republic in which all this was 
true and yet which would be a very uninviting place to live. We 
can think of a government and society in which all life and intelli- 
gence and virtue had been leveled up or down to the grade of 
mediocrity. One can think of this as smothering ambition, toning 
down all excellence, and leaving life flat, stale and unprofitable. 
The second test of a democracy, then, is this, that in addition to 
widespread popular welfare, it shall exhibit its product in the 
great men whom it produces. It is not enough that a govern- 
ment of the people and for the people shall produce a higher 
average of prosperity and intelligence than a monarchy ; it must 
show that within it is the possibility of rising far above the low 
level of ordinary living. It must display the possibility of indi- 
vidual excellence. 

Nor is it enough that a democracy shall have produced great 
men in the past: it must continue to produce them. Democracy 
can never be safe without great leaders, men of the people, yet 
men who stand like Saul, head and shoulders above the people 
from the midst of whom they have sprung. 

The Permanent Glory of Lincoln 

The heroes come and go with the years. Some men accounted 
great in their own day pass from public view and are remembered 
no more. It is not that their lives were failures. They served 
their generation well, and the honor accorded them in their life- 
time may not have been greater than they deserved, but here and 
there a name stands out with more of distinctness as the years 
bring his memory into sharper relief. One such name is that of 
Abraham Lincoln. 

It is more than fifty years since Lincoln died. The number of 
people who knew him personally is still not small, but it diminishes 
rapidly. Each year a few incidents appear in print for the first 
time relating to his life or personality. No one who knew him, or 
even met him, now counts any incident too trivial to relate con- 
cerning him. Anecdotes that seemed too unimportant to relate at 
the time come now before the public in the effort to gather and 
record every possible scrap concerning him. Unquestionably time 
has glorified many of these incidents and not a few of them 
have only the value of probable invention, yet some genuinely 
good historical material continues to come to the front. It is 
interesting and valuable to note that the new material, such as 
it is, does not greatly modify the impression which the American 
people, and the world, have come to cherish as their thought and 
estimate of Lincoln. One by one the biographies of his cabinet 



members have appeared, and in some cases their diaries have been 
published. It is evident that those who were nearest to Lincoln 
while he lived were in less favorable position for judging of his 
abiding influence upon the world than people of today. They saw 
in him an overburdened man, harassed by countless petty cares, 
endeavoring with honest futility to measure up to a task too 
great for him. The world sees in Lincoln a man whose very 
failings lean to virtue's side. His great heart, too kind always 
to be judicial; his patience often sorely tried, but never quite fail- 
ing; his faith in God that had in it as component elements the 
logician's question and the frontiersman's close approach to 
superstition; his loneliness intensified by his companionableness; 
his profound sadness, ever on the point of reacting into quaint 
humor — these were among the elements that made up the char- 
acter of Lincoln. Of him the world might say as Hamlet said 
of his father : 

"He was a man, take him all in all ; 
I shall not look upon his like again." 

Of him might Shakespeare have written in another play : 

"His life was gentle; and the elements 
So mix'd in him that Nature might stand up, 
And say to all the world, 'This was a man !' " 

Born in a log cabin ; nurtured in the wilderness; rising out of 
deepest obscurity till he reached the White House; fighting a 
great war, though always loving peace ; doing his tragic duty, 
though it broke his sympathetic heart, and crowning his work 
at length with the sacrifice of his own life, the story of Abraham 
Lincoln contains every element that can appeal to the admiration 
of men who love their country, and the faith of those who believe 
in the fundamental righteousness of democracy. 

He came to the White House at a time which seemed least 
likely to utilize his strong qualities and certain to reveal all his 
weaknesses. Some of his best and closest friends distrusted his 
ability to cope with the tremendous odds. His duties were unpre- 
cedented ; the obstacles before him were beyond the ability of 
any man to measure. He was distrusted and misunderstood, be- 
littled and caricatured, but he faced the gigantic problems of his 
administration with patience, fortitude, heroic determination and 
faith in Almighty God. 

He fought a cruel war without cruelty or hatred. He met 
malice in a spirit which displayed malice toward none and charity 
for all. He did a great man's work greatly, and he crowned it 
with the sacrifice of his own life. Let America honor forever the 
name of Abraham Lincoln. 



The Creed of Abraham Lincoln 
in His Own Words 



I believe in God, the Almighty Ruler of Nations, our great 
and good and merciful Maker, our Father in Heaven, who notes 
the fall of a sparrow, and numbers the hairs of our heads. 

I believe in His eternal truth and justice. 

I recognize the sublime truth announced in the Holy Scrip- 
tures and proven by all history that those nations only are blest 
whose God is the Lord. 

1 believe that it is the duty of nations as well as of men to 
own their dependence upon the overruling power of God, and to 
invoke the influence of His Holy Spirit; to confess their sins and 
transgressions in humble sorrow, yet with assured hope that 
genuine repentance will lead to mercy and pardon. 

I believe that it is meet and right to recognize and confess 
the presence of the Almighty Father equally in our triumphs 
and in those sorrows which we may justly fear are a punishment 
inflicted upon us for our presumptuous sins to the needful end of 
our reformation. 

I believe that the Bible is the best gift which God has ever 
given to men. All the good from the Saviour of the world is 
communicated to us through this book. 

I believe the will of God prevails. Without Him all human 
reliance is vain. Without the assistance of that Divine Being I 
cannot succeed. With that assistance I cannot fail. 

Being a humble instrument in the hands of our Heavenly 
Father, I desire that all my works and acts may be according 
to His will ; and that it may be so, I give thanks to the Almighty, 
and seek His aid. 

I have a solemn oath registered in heaven to finish the work 
I am in, in full view of my responsibility to my God, with malice 
toward none ; Avith charity for all ; with firmness in the right 
as God gives me to see the right. Commending those who love 
me to His care, as I hope in their prayers they will commend me, 
I look through the help of God to a joyous meeting with many 
loved ones gone before. 

(This Creed of Abraham Lincohi is an extract from "The Soul 
of Abraham Lincoln" (Doran), by the Reverend William E. Barton. 
D. D. No liberties have been taken with Lincoln's sentences, all 
publicly uttered, except to change the past tense to the present, 
or the plural to the si'ngular, and to add connectives and preface 
the words, "I believe.") 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




011 839 262 



The Soul of 
Abraham Lincoln 

By V/ILLIAM E. BARTON 



A notable contribution to the litera- 
ture of the subject, and a book of 
permanent worth 



Published by George H. Doran Co., 

of New York, and for sale at 

regular price, $4, by 

ADVANCE PUBLISHING CO. 
Oak Park, Illinois 



